Hogwash(2)

Four times as many antibiotics per pound of meat is used in the raising of pigs as in cattle. (Photo: GT/Li Hao)

How dangerous it is?

A 2013 study, also published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the increased use of antibiotics in the animal production sector was mirrored by a growth in the number of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) which reduce the efficacy of antibiotics in fending off diseases.

According to China News Weekly, researchers from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences took samples from the manure of pigs raised on three commercial farms in China, each of which produce around 10,000 pigs per year.

The researchers found 149 unique ARGs in the samples taken. As antibiotics are poorly absorbed by the animals, most of it is evacuated in their manure.

This is then spread as fertilizer, or carried downstream, transmitting the ARGs into food crops and water supply.

When these ARGs come into contact with bacteria that cause illnesses in humans, the result can be a "superbug" that is resistant to currently available antibiotics.

A Huffington Post report noted that researchers predict that if left unchecked, such illnesses could kill up to 10 million people worldwide by 2050.

"It's urgent that we protect the effectiveness of our current antibiotics because discovering new ones is extremely difficult," said Zhu Yongguan, one of the paper's co-authors and professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a press release.

"Multidrug resistance is a global problem and must be addressed in a comprehensive manner, and one area that needs to be addressed is more judicious use and management of wastes that contain ARGs."

The counterargument, put forward by pharmaceutical companies and agricultural groups, is that there is no direct evidence that drug-resistant bacteria in animals pose a threat to human health.

While Laxminarayan admitted that this was the case, he argued that the circumstantial evidence was persuasive.

"The circumstantial evidence, linking use in animals to drug-resistant bacteria in humans, is exceedingly strong," he said in the NPR report.

Researchers noted that in many countries, including China, the use of antibiotics in the raising of animals is largely unmonitored and poorly regulated.

An exception is the European Union, which in 2006 banned the use of antibiotics in animal feed, although it can still be used to treat infections.

The US Food and Drug Administration has allowed the use of antibiotics as an additive in animal feed since 1950.

The need for regulation

Zhu Yi told Metropolitan that at present, it was impossible to completely ban the use of antibiotics in animal feed in China.

"We need to first educate farmers about [the potential risks when using antibiotics] in the raising of livestock," she said.

Zhu Yi suggested that guidelines could be set as to the amount of time between when an animal is given antibiotics, and when it was slaughtered for meat.

"We should maximize the amount of time between when an animal is given antibiotics, and when it is killed, so the amount of antibiotics still in its system is minimal," said Zhu Yi.

Regulations like this, when they are set, should be strictly enforced, said Zhu Yi.

In 2011, it was widely reported that the government had found the use of Clenbuterol, a dangerous drug that was suspected to be widely-used in China to make meat leaner.

For the time being, Zhu Yi advised people to reduce their intake of pork to less than 100 grams per day.